The Tiger at Home

… of gunboat diplomacy: Dan Savage.

Savage, being America-centric, names the incident that took place under T.R.  The proper comparison, of course, took place under Palmerston.

It only took until the fifth comment on this post for someone to make the same observation that I made earlier.

Update:  Well, it’s my view that Khartoum could use a dose of Gordon and Kitchener again.

But maybe that’s just me.

Posted a comment over at CalgaryGrit that I wanted to share.

Re Munich and all that — it all depended on the Soviets. With them onside, stopping the Germans in 1938 would have been a mere matter of marching.* (The Czechs had a strong modern army and solid fortifications, and the German industrial base was weak w/o the Czech armament works.) Chamberlain seems to have thought that an entente with Moscow was so immoral that London and Paris had to face Berlin without them. As late as spring 1939, the British government did not even deign to give Moscow a reply to an offer of an alliance against Berlin.

This ‘purity’ meant that when the war came, the Soviets were aligned with the other side for the first part. Oops. Left them with the whip hand after the war.

What all of this has to do with environmental policy, however, I don’t know. If human contributions to the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are the primary drivers of global warming, we’re in a lot of trouble. If not, we’re panicking like we have on a number of other issues over the past few decades, and current discourse is going to look silly in a couple of decades.

As for global agreements on this, it seems reasonable to cut developing countries’ economies a break. On the other hand, it seems silly to provide them with no limits whatsoever if the developed countries are given hard limits.

Canada is a bit player in this debate.

* — Added here: without them onside, Britain was relatively unarmed in 1938. The navy was ready enough, but not the air force or the army.  Weigh the value of the RAF against having a modern Czechoslovak army in the fight.

If I were a Liberal, this would give me pause.

“Speak truthfully and guide them in good ways. If they do not agree, then stop and do not disgrace yourself for them.” According to federal Liberal sources in high places, many friends of Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion are doing exactly what Confucius suggested, and after “speaking truthfully” and trying to “guide him” for months, they have stopped, mostly in an effort “not to disgrace themselves” with him. …

Talking on background with The Hill Times many Liberals admit that the chances to form the next government are very slim considering the political environment.

“The only question,” said one Liberal MP, “is the degree of the defeat. We hope it’s going to be like 1988 but many fear that we could go through another 1984 debacle, if not worse.” In 1984, the Liberals won 40 seats and in 1988, they won 80 seats.

I don’t know what to say about Stephane Dion’s leadership — to be honest, Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition is a job that really, really sucks.  The last two leaders of the opposition who became PM — Chretien and Harper — had a rough go of it.  I think that Dion is getting a bad rap from his party members and from the media.

On the other hand, if he can’t even keep his natural constituency…

I share David Brooks’ concerns:

Lou Dobbs is winning. He’s not winning personally. He’s not going to start winning presidential awards or elite respect. But his message is winning. Month by month the ideas that once prevailed on the angry fringe enter the mainstream and turn into conventional wisdom.

Once there was a majority in favor of liberal immigration policies, but apparently that’s not true anymore, at least if you judge by campaign rhetoric. Once there was a bipartisan consensus behind free trade, but that’s not true anymore, either. Even Republicans, by a two-to-one majority, believe free trade is bad for America, according to a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll.  …

And if Dobbsianism is winning when times are good, you can imagine how attractive it’s going to seem if we enter the serious recession that Larry Summers convincingly and terrifyingly forecasts in yesterday’s Financial Times. If the economy dips as seriously as that, the political climate could shift in ugly ways.

On the other hand, America has faced this before, and America tends to reject that option over the long run.

So Kasparov’s been arrested, and the elections are going on next week.

One story I missed — the Kremlin-backed leftist party, Spravelivaya Rossiya (”A Just Russia”), has failed to consolidate the left-wing vote.  The Communists have kept their hold on it.

I think that the Christian Science Monitor has it wrong in part — the disappearance of the independent deputies is no problem.  Most of them were in the pocket of Edinaya Rossiya (United Russia) anyway.  On the other hand, the failure of the liberal parties (Yabloko and Soyuz Pravykh Sil) to consolidate into one party that can win ten percent of the seats — that is worrisome.

Still, the thing is that Russians support Putin, his party, and his policies.  The press has become a joke and the textbooks are being re-written, but those opinion polls are real.

It’s very possible that the people just do not want liberal democracy.  It’s a diagnosis that echoes what the conservative and reactionary sides said before the series of revolutions at the start of the twentieth century — and it doesn’t look like it’s wrong.

And that’s sad.

… for things like this.

This article amused me. [via Faith -- who, to be fair, had her car stolen twice as a grad student]

Why? Because Yale is one of the most wacky left-wing places I know of. They brought a former spokesman for the Taliban to be a student there (and would probably have admitted him for a full degree programme had it not been for the press hullabaloo that came after). I remember seeing one of their admissions officers saying at an Ivy event in Oakville, Ontario, “at Yale you will embrace diversity or have it imposed upon you.” (I was a high school student at the time, and my first choice then was Yale. That gave me pause, even in my left-wing days.)

I mean, honestly, Yalies probably are among the American crowds most sympathetic to the ending statement:

McGill has problems, and inequality, and Montreal has racial and socioeconomic disparities, but at least Montreal isn’t a city that physically inspires visitors to join the Communist Party.
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Good eye. I hadn’t noticed this.

BAGHDAD—Iraq’s government, seeking protection against foreign threats and internal coups, will offer the U.S. a long-term troop presence in Iraq in return for U.S. security guarantees as part of a strategic partnership, two Iraqi officials said Monday. …

U.S. troops and other foreign forces operate in Iraq under a U.N. Security Council mandate, which has been renewed annually since 2003. Iraqi officials have said they want that next renewal — which must be approved by the U.N. Security Council by the end of this year — to be the last. …
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1. Whither the Liberals? The National’s At Issue panel goes to town on them.

2. Karl Rove: I wish there hadn’t been a vote on Iraq before the 2002 elections. It didn’t belong in the confines of an election. (Wow.)

3. Watching old House episodes — the teaching hospital seems to be placed in Frist. (And McCosh, I suppose.) The main montage shows a wide three-quarter shot of Frist that frames it with Woody Woo and Prospect House. Other montages show Little Hall, Dillon Gym, Brown Hall, and Edwards — ‘Spoon doesn’t quite make it in there.

I had an idea of a (fictive) teaching hospital out on Highway 1, or downtown where PMC is — not right on campus…

4/5. McCain seems to have earned the right to say “I told you so.” Good ads, too.

“Look, now the same people who were saying seven or eight months were saying you can’t succeed militarily, we’ve succeeded military. Sen. Edwards used to call it the ‘McCain strategy.’ He doesn’t call it that anymore,” McCain claimed. “Their record is wrong on this. My record is right.”

6. LOL.

People who write reviews for a living will recognize the work of a man who is trying hard not to say anything bad about the deceased, while being careful not to praise. This is the elegiac equivalent of “Only Paul Wells could have written a book like this:” It takes care not to address what a book like this is like.

7. A brokered convention?

8.  Yes.

Really, it is.

If I could just sneak out in the middle of the night and saw off Rudy Giuliani’s strong right arm and John McCain’s ramrod back and Mitt Romney’s fabulous hair and stitch them all together in Baron von Frankenstein’s laboratory with the help of some neck bolts, we’d have the perfect Republican nominee. As it is, the present field poses difficulties for almost every faction of the GOP base.

Rudy Giuliani was a brilliant can-do executive who transformed the fortunes of what was supposedly one of the most ungovernable cities in the nation. But on guns, abortion and almost every other social issue he’s anathema to much of the party. Mike Huckabee is an impeccable social conservative but, fiscally speaking, favors big-government solutions with big-government price tags. Ron Paul has a long track record of sustained philosophically coherent support for small government but he’s running as a neo-isolationist on war and foreign policy. John McCain believes in assertive American global leadership but he believes just as strongly in constitutional abominations like McCain-Feingold.

So if you’re a pro-gun anti-abortion tough-on-crime victory-in-Iraq small-government Republican the 2008 selection is a tough call. Mitt Romney, the candidate whose (current) policies least offend the most people, happens to be a Mormon, which, if the media are to be believed, poses certain obstacles for elements of the Christian right.

Main point:

On the other hand, as National Review’s Jonah Goldberg pointed out, the mainstream media are always demanding the GOP demonstrate its commitment to “big tent” Republicanism, and here we are with the biggest of big tents in history, and what credit do they get? You want an anti-war Republican? A pro-abortion Republican? An anti-gun Republican? A pro-illegal immigration Republican? You got ‘em! Short of drafting Fidel Castro and Mullah Omar, it’s hard to see how the tent could get much bigger. As the new GOP bumper sticker says, “Celebrate Diversity.”

Saw McCain with Stephanopoulos today — he looked really good.

My favourite Star Trek series, in retrospect, is Deep Space Nine.

Why? Stuff like this. (Ending here. Best bit of over-acting here. Best bit of evil weapons-running at the end of this.)

I like Sisko the most of all the captains except possibly for Captain Kirk.  They both had something of the rule-breaker in them — they were real.  (Insofar as fictional space captains can be.)

Soviet-era game here. [Via The Corner]

If you’re semi-lame, you can read the instructions here. (I learned by doing.)

If you’re good, you’ll see this:

Update: It’s an interesting game. It shows Soviet-era attitudes about due process, too — you can shoot two innocent people and still win a medal — to say nothing of the fact that execution is seen as a valid punishment for simple theft, and the investigator will be sent to the gulag if he doesn’t find the guilty party.

Update again:  My record right now is 992.

I had to laugh at this line –

To the south, in Mexico, resentment of the Bush administration has less to do with American unilateralism and more with stalled immigration policy and the building of a border fence. But the thirst for change is the same.

“Mexicans want evidence that things are shifting, which means the Democrats, and of course a woman like Hillary Clinton, or a black like Obama, would signal a huge cultural change,” said Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister.

If immigration liberalization is what they want, they shouldn’t be so quick to jump off the Bush bandwagon and onto the Democrats’.  George W. Bush was Mexico’s best friend, and he risked significant political capital to push their case.

Liberalization came under Reagan, and was attempted under Bush.  Under Bill Clinton, we got the Immigration Reform Act of 1996.  The Mexicans pining for Clinton or Obama might get a rude awakening.  [via a similarly skeptical (but for different reasons) Savage]

Maybe Obama does have the killer instinct, after all…

[My money's still on the bitch, however.  For precisely that reason.]

This is how this guy won the support of this guy.

Priorities.

… but really, if you didn’t know that James Carville was a Clinton backer, you don’t know anything about American politics.

Update: To be clear, Carville is great on CNN. And everyone knows where he’s coming from. (The garbage pail over his head in 2002 was classic.)

Having opinionated people as analysts is great. Having people who have said opinions and hide them (or express them passive-aggressively) is annoying.

James Carville has never hidden his opinions.

Viz.:

But as had already been discovered in literary utopias, perfectibility breaks on the rock of dissent. What do you do with people who don’t endorse your views or fit in with your plans? Nathaniel Hawthorne, a disillusioned graduate of the real-life Brooke Farm utopian scheme, pointed out that the Puritan founders of New England - who intended to build the New Jerusalem - began with a prison and a gibbet. Forced re-education, exile and execution are the usual choices on offer in utopias for any who oppose the powers that be. It’s rats in the eyes for you - as in Nineteen Eighty-Four - if you won’t love Big Brother. Brave New World has its own gentler punishments: for non-conformists, it’s exile to Iceland, where Man’s Final End can be discussed among like-minded intellects, without pestering “normal” people - in a sort of university, as it were.  [Discussion here.]

In modern Western society, we put them in real universities and give them tenure. Or give them newspaper columns.

They are so oppressed.

… Harper apparently can pick his Liberals.

Today’s news sounds reasonable.

Insta-update: One should note, too, that Harper needs to be able to pick his Liberals — that’s the only way to a majority government in the rest of the country.

Update again: On the other hand…

Update the third:  But any of these mini-scandals go the way of the in-and-out “scandal”, I think.

Whatever.  The Liberals will be back, it’s only a matter of when.  Till then, the only thing to do is to build the Conservative Party as a long-term centre-right project.  That’s Harper’s goal, and he’s damned if he’s going to let the Mulroney issue scuttle it.

So it’s time to register for the Foreign Service Exam, and they’ve added new application questions in narrative form. (more…)